


In All Things, Balance

by Kedreeva



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angel Trueforms, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Conversations with God, Crowley and Gabriel battle in their trueforms, Cuddling & Snuggling, Demon Trueforms, First Kiss, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Near Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Presumed Dead, Protectiveness, Wingfic, Wings, crowley puts himself in danger of dying to protect aziraphale, physical fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-18 22:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20320441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: The world had failed to end over a year ago, and Heaven and Hell hadn't so much as looked sideways at them since the kidnapping. As they had taken six thousand years to plan the apocalypse, and their first move against Crowley and Aziraphale had failed so miserably, the duo had assumed they had more than a little bit of time to relax before they had to start watching their backs again. Crowley had moved his flat into the upstairs of the bookshop – quite literally, much to Aziraphale's dismay to find one afternoon – and life had continued on exactly the way it shouldn't have: happily.Unfortunately, theever afterpart proves trickier after only a year.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [In All Things, Balance - Versión en español](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20519423) by [RavenSnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenSnow/pseuds/RavenSnow)

* * *

_“Both light and shadow are the dance of Love_

_Love has no cause, it is the astrolabe of God's secrets_

_Lover and loving are inseparable and timeless [...]_

_Although I may try to write about love [...]_

_My pen breaks, and the paper slips away_

_at the ineffable place where lover loving and loved are one.”_

\- Jelaluddin Rumi

* * *

Oddly enough, it happens in broad daylight.

Neither of them are expecting it, of course. The world had failed to end over a year ago, and Heaven and Hell hadn't so much as looked sideways at them since the kidnapping. As they had taken six thousand years to plan the apocalypse, and their first move against Crowley and Aziraphale had failed so miserably, the duo had assumed they had more than a little bit of time to relax before they had to start watching their backs again. Crowley had moved his flat into the upstairs of the bookshop – quite literally, much to Aziraphale's dismay to find one afternoon – and life had continued on exactly the way it shouldn't have: happily.

Unfortunately, the _ever after_ part proves trickier after only a year.

They exit the bookshop they'd been visiting, one they'd found in southern France that had ended up with a book Aziraphale had grudgingly sold nearly a hundred years prior. Crowley holds the door open so that Aziraphale does not have to stop pawing through his reclaimed book, looking for damages and tutting about the care the book has been given while out of his.

As such, neither one of them is paying attention to anything else. The door clicks shut behind them as Aziraphale runs a finger over one of the lines of text, and ahead of them the sky darkens and cracks open the way a window does when impacted by a baseball bat. Light cascades through, and within it Crowley sees gleaming, tawny feathers and lion-clawed hands reaching for Aziraphale.

Gabriel.

Crowley reacts on instinct, dropping all pretenses of mortality in order to meet Gabriel's true form with his own, the only way he will stand a chance. Knowing the element of surprise will be his only advantage and that it will only last seconds, Crowley hits the Archangel full force, wings out and wheels spinning. The contact sears, but Crowley knows the hellfire licking at the serpent wheels of his true form will hurt Gabriel just as badly.

Gabriel twists to grab at him with snapping, lion-like jaws, and the serpents wheeled up to cage Crowley's core release their tails, flipping to form chains around Gabriel's magic instead, like a snake coiled tight around prey. All six of Gabriel's golden wings flare out to escape the prison, and Crowley's grip tightens around the scalding core of holy light sitting in the hollow of Gabriel's open chest. It will destroy him, but Crowley will burn himself out to take Gabriel down, will ruin them both, if it means protecting Aziraphale.

He forces his will upon time, but Gabriel is just as outside of it here as he is, and it only slows around them, the seconds muffled as they pass. Distantly, Crowley is aware of his corporation's name being called. He feels the sharp bite of Gabriel's teeth sinking into his shoulder until they touch inside of his chest. He will lose this corporation. It doesn't matter. Neither of them will make it out of this.

Crowley mantles both of his wings around them to contain his attack and his core brightens, burning with hellfire and magic. He was seraphim once, made to create and destroy in the beginning, his song made to grant power to the Almighty, Herself. He had given stars his ability to go supernova, to destroy themselves in the process of creating something new, the way he intends to do now.

"_CROWLEY!_"

Aziraphale's voice cuts through the static of Crowley's burn, and time speeds up and Gabriel yanks him down to the cement with him. Crowley half-folds one wing and slams the bend of it into Gabriel's eye, the brilliant purple one set in his lion's head and he hears bones crunch. He wonders whose they are. He cannot feel his corporation properly anymore.

For one, crystalline moment, Crowley sees Aziraphale standing behind Gabriel, his vision of the angel fragmented by the thousands of eyes all over his true form. Aziraphale's wings blaze with holy light. Crowley can see four animal aspects in him. Principalities only have one. He hasn't run. Aziraphale is still here, and he has a sword in his hands, and that's too familiar for Crowley.

They had _stopped_ the end. It isn't supposed to go like this.

His wheels constrict tighter, but he can feel Gabriel's essence burning brighter in his hollow chest, and Crowley knows he will not survive that kind of holy light for much longer. Gabriel's skin crackles like bacon under Crowley's grip, but it is not enough.

Crowley pushes back with everything he has left, a battle of wills, but even Seraphim are a lower order than the Seven Archangels, and he is outmatched in a knowing fight. His well of magic, though vast, is finite, and Gabriel's well is deeper. Crowley's life force will give out first, the way a human's does when they have lost enough blood.

Something clangs off his coils, and he opens the eyes there to see Aziraphale pulling his sword away.

Aziraphale had struck him.

_ Aziraphale?_ he says, inside and out. He tastes blood in his mouth, but he can't tell which one. That can't be good.

Aziraphale had _struck_ him.

Gabriel's light is burning through his magic faster than he can replace it, faster than he can regenerate, and Aziraphale had attacked him with a flaming sword. Hadn't they sent that away? Dizziness drags at him. He is losing.

"Let him go!" Aziraphale shouts, his voice chambered, and Crowley realizes the words have come from all of his heads. "Crowley! You have to let him go!"

Gabriel writhes in Crowley's grasp, six wings battering at him. He'll escape Crowley on his own in a moment; Crowley is fading too quickly to stop him anymore. Aziraphale is right, he has to let Gabriel go. It will kill him. _Gabriel_ will kill him, and Aziraphale will be next.

They'd had a good run of it, he thinks, full to the brim with regret that this is how it will end.

Crowley's magic reaches the bottom of its well, and his coiled wheels slack as he begins to lose cohesion. Gabriel is on him in a second, claws outstretched and holy light so bright as to be unbearable. Crowley does not have the strength to meet him again.

There is a sound, a crackle like a bonfire coming to life but a thousand times louder, and the light twists as Gabriel howls, clawing at something else, something Crowley cannot see.

Aziraphale, Crowley thinks, trying to pack himself back into his dying corporation. He doesn't have the magic left to heal any part of himself. He barely has the dregs of magic left to hold onto existence just a moment longer. He had used everything to give Aziraphale a chance, and Aziraphale hadn't taken it to save himself. He had stayed, to fight a battle he could not possibly win.

He had not left Crowley to die alone.

Crowley wishes he had. He cannot bear the thought of a world without Aziraphale, even if he, himself, is no longer in it.

Gabriel's shrieking stops, and for one sinking, horrible moment, everything holds so still Crowley thinks maybe time really did stop.

And then the light returns, scorching even through Crowley's closed lids, and he surrenders to it without a fight.

Without Aziraphale, surviving has no worth.

He had thought they would have more _time_.

* * *

Crowley wakes to the searing pain of holy light seeping into his wounds like honey, thick and sticky and destroying him. He struggles weakly against Gabriel, hoping for a swift end to the agony, and finds a firm but gentle hand pressed into his uninjured shoulder. He is aware of screaming, and thinks it might be his own, but he can't tell.

He can't see. He can't see _anything_.

Thousands of eyes and he can't see a damn thing.

Fear courses through him like a live wire- he nearly loses consciousness from the force of it, and then a voice cuts through the panic.

"I'm so sorry," he hears, and it's Aziraphale. "Please try to hold still, Crowley. I'm not sure- I'm so sorry, I'm doing my best, but-"

Alive. He's _alive_.

Relief chases hard on the heels of the fear, like a hound after a fox, and Crowley really does pass out then.

* * *

The next time he struggles awake, everything is quiet, but it is the sort of quiet that implies calm, not absence. There is still holy light coursing under his skin, through his true form, and it makes his entire body feel like he's been pressed under a hot iron, but it isn't killing him anymore. He seeks it out inside, ready to purge it, ready to sink back into the soft, comforting dark, but he realizes almost too late that the light is all that holds him together.

He should be dead, he thinks, in the distant sort of way people think things as they are dying. He should have died.

Opening his mouth, he tries to speak, but the motion brings with it fresh agony, and all that comes out is a wordless scream.

Footsteps and voices skitter under the raw sounds Crowley makes as he tries to breathe before he remembers he doesn't _have to_, and stops. Anathema – _Anathema??_ – appears in his line of vision, and more hands than she has press him back onto the bed. White feathers mantle high over her, and he manages to loll his head to the side far enough to see Aziraphale.

"Stop thrashing!" Anathema commands, and Crowley nearly manages to obey. His entire body is shaking too badly to listen to anyone, so although he goes slack, he still moves. "You're safe but you're _very badly_ hurt, Crowley," she continues. "Do you understand? Your boyfriend came and got me to help, but I've never tried to heal an angel before."

"Angel-" Crowley echoes, hand spasming. Everything _hurts_. "How-"

A hand slides into his, and maybe it would have been warm on a normal day but it feels like an icy balm now, so much colder than the molten lava coursing through his veins. He is not made to contain anything holy, not like this. Anathema touches his other side, touches something that sends a shock through him, as if she can touch his true form with mortal fingers.

"You fought Gabriel, you silly thing," Aziraphale tells him, throat closing up on the words and Crowley doesn't have to see him to know there are tears. The bed beside Crowley dips as Aziraphale sits against his hip. "You saved me, now let Anathema save you."

She's human, Crowley thinks, clinging to the last shreds of wakefulness. She's never healed an angel- she doesn't even know he's a demon. Crowley wants to laugh, but he thinks it might kill him to do it, so he just lets go again and everything fades back into the painless nothing.

* * *

The room is dark and silent and everything aches before he even opens his eyes. There is still holy light thrumming inside of him and he lies there unable to do anything except tolerate the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He has nothing left with which to stop them, no strength of will or scrap of power, so he lets them flow until they are through.

No one comes for him.

When his tears are spent and he only trembles finely again, he struggles onto his side. His wings are out, no power left to hide them, but they are bandaged and folded to his back, held in place with more bandages. He doesn't remember injuring them, but they ache like the rest of him so he must have. He lies on his side, not breathing, just staring into the darkness.

"Aziraphale?" he eventually calls, voice wobbling such that it threatens to collapse entirely. When he uses his lungs, the deep bite wounds on his shoulder and chest flare with pain as if they are being torn in all over again. He closes his eyes but it doesn't stop fresh tears from welling. His blood pounds against the inside of his skull, erratic and relentless.

There is no answer. He is alone.

He doesn't know how long he lies there. It feels like eternity. He calls for Aziraphale again, but it feels like trying to rip his heart out of his chest every time, so he stops. Aziraphale isn't close enough to hear him, isn't close enough to feel his distress. Maybe Gabriel had come back to finish what he'd started. Aziraphale wouldn't have stood a chance by himself, not against an Archangel.

Crowley struggles to get upright. Holy light surges inside of him, seeking to heal and only succeeding in tearing at his seams. His own power wraps around it, suppressing it, but there's not enough of his own yet to sustain him. His essence requires magic to exist the way humans require blood to live, and he'll make it the same way- slowly. Until then this- this- _donation_ is filling in the gaps.

It may yet kill him, but for the moment it is the only thing keeping him alive.

The floor is chill against his overheated feet as he sits on the edge of the bed, fighting the unnecessary urge to pant from the effort and the rolling waves of nausea. He calls out again, Aziraphale's name shattering over a dry sob at the excruciating sensation the motion brings. He receives no response. Blearily, he stumbles to his feet, desperate to go in search of him, to see him and smell him and touch him and know he is still alive.

The world lists sharply to the right, or maybe Crowley does, and the floor comes up to greet him. His last thought is of how lovely the cold floorboards are about to be.

* * *

He is back in the bed.

His head still hurts, and the holy light in his blood still clamors around inside of him looking for cracks to split open, but as he stares up at the ceiling he realizes it hurts _less_. His own magic is starting to recover by degrees. His skin and bones are knitting, but slowly. He might actually live.

He takes an experimental breath, and stops immediately because that still feels worse than dying. Gabriel had nearly taken his arm off; Crowley suspects he would have lost it, except for Aziraphale's desperate attempts to heal him. He vaguely recalls seeing Anathema, and hearing her say_ she_ was going to heal him, and wonders if that was real. The bandages certainly feel like the work of a human and if he focuses, he can find the vestiges left behind by human magic lingering inside of his corporeal wounds. Maybe it had been real, after all.

Something in the dark room shifts, and Crowley startles at the figure seated in a chair near the door, an armchair that had most definitely _not_ been in the bedroom last time he'd been conscious.

"You're alive," She says, and his response to Her presence goes right down to his core: fear and respect and a bone deep longing he'd thought he'd left behind millennia ago. She's sitting right there, one leg crossed over the other and a _New Aquarian_ open in Her lap, like She hadn't abandoned him at the first opportunity. Like She hadn't _ruined_ him.

He wants to say something, but he doesn't know what words he could possibly say to address what sits between them. She watches him for a long moment, waiting with an unfamiliar amount of patience, before She finally looks back down to Her magazine.

“You're just full of surprises,” She remarks, not looking up again. “You shouldn’t be. _I_ certainly didn’t make you that way, Crowley, but... here you are.” She sounds almost… impressed. Fond, if She is ever such a thing. "Do you remember why you're like this?"

Crowley swallows, the taste of apple still sweet on his tongue after so many millennia. He has tasted nothing but ash since that day- not because She had cursed him, but because he had cursed himself by partaking. Nothing will ever again slake his thirst for knowledge. No food will ever taste as sweet as an answer. Of course he remembers- he's been unable to forget.

“I thought as much,” She says, with a small, sad smile, as if She has heard his thoughts. Maybe She has. “My dear, sweet serpent. You’ve made such a mess of things, haven’t you?”

She rises then, approaching him, and he finds he does not have the strength to recoil or fight, even if it would work. Desperately, he wishes Aziraphale were here, so he could at least say goodbye before he is burned out of existence. So that he could just see him one last time. He closes his eyes, unable to watch his death approach, knowing he is helpless.

Her touch, when it arrives, does not burn. It soothes over him, settling the pain, until She reaches for the light within him, pulling it out of him like a thread from a spool. He struggles against the strange sensation, aware that Aziraphale's light is the only thing keeping him alive, no matter how much pain it causes. Gently, She disentangles his hold, and the last bit of it slips free of him.

Dizziness floods in and his vision goes black even though he thinks he is still conscious, and Her voice filters through the fading reality.

"He loves you," She says, almost idly. He can feel himself dying. "Light like this should have killed you, but you've soaked into every bit of him, haven't you? His power recognized you as part of itself and sought to heal you. Sought to _redeem_ you. Can you imagine, holy light _healing_ a demon?"

Her chuckle rolls over him and then he feels another touch, the same cool calm as the first, and something... twists. His stomach drops and rises and his head spins and something lances into his true form. This is it, then, he thinks weakly. She waited to kill him until she had recovered Aziraphale's light from him, and now her patience with him has truly run out.

"Do you know why you lost your wings?" She asks. If he had been breathing, he would have to stop now, with how tightly She grips onto his true form. He cannot answer Her, but mercifully he knows she needs no answer for such a rhetorical question. They both know he'd lost them to the sulfur pools when She cast him down.

But when the answer comes, it is not what he expects.

"Because you no longer needed them."

He had, he wants to tell Her, he had still needed them, still_ wanted_ them, but She digs into his essence before he can even try to explain now. Aziraphale's light returns to him, changed, and all of the pain She has held at bay floods back with it. All he can do is scream, thrashing in her grasp, until he loses consciousness for a moment. He knows it is _only_ a moment because he can still hear the echo of his own voice when he comes to, weak and listless and entirely unable to fight.

Only when he falls still does She draw a finger along his essence, along the very core of him, and from the raw wound, a new wing slowly unfolds. She repeats the motion on the other side of his core, and twice more after that, until he is whole in ways he has not been since he sang Her praises. Gently, She wraps a hand around the break in his mortal wing, and the bones leap to obey her in ways he cannot, knitting together in perfection as the bandages disintegrate beneath her touch.

"I gave you two bodies," she tells him gently, finally releasing him, "and you've no regard for either of them, it seems. He does though, your Aziraphale."

There are a thousand, a million, a billion things he wishes to say to her. He has asked so many questions over the ages, cried them to the heavens, whispered them in vain into pillows. He has railed at her for millennia, for longer than that, about the injustices done to him and to others.

However, only one question matters now.

Crowley sucks in a breath, ignoring the pain that brings with it, and asks: "Where is he?"

"With the other angels, I expect," she says. "Do you know what he did for you?"

Eyes closing, Crowley's body goes completely slack around him, and he can't find the strength to answer her. There can only be one answer to that question; Aziraphale has Fallen, or he's about to, and there's nothing Crowley can do about it from here. He'll Fall, and won't even have the comfort of doing so with others the way Crowley had done. If he survives it, and Crowley knows there is a good chance he will not, there's no guarantee he'll remember anything from before. Crowley does, but that seems like a fluke, considering how many other demons do not. He remembers just enough to know what he's lost, a fact made infinitely worse by knowing that is _why_ he cannot just forget.

It hurts more for him to remember. It will hurt Aziraphale worse to forget.

Crowley can do nothing about it for either of them, and that is perhaps worst of all.

"He's killed an Archangel," she continues, almost as if she thinks the words should placate him. "Gabriel is slain, between the two of you. Aziraphale will face the others for it."

"Please," Crowley croaks, trying to pry his stubborn eyes open, trying to see her so he can beg properly. She is the only one who can stop them from hurting Aziraphale. Of the two of them, she is the only one who can save him. "It was me, take me instead, punish me instead. Please- don't-"

A soft hand smooths over his fevered forehead, down his temple, to rest upon his cheek. "Hush now," she soothes. "I well know your place in this. That is why I am here. You know, I imagined a lot of things when I created you, my little serpent, but nothing like this. Never a demon so willing to sacrifice for something holy. Never an angel so willing to protect one who had Fallen. What _am_ I to do with the two of you?"

"Please," he begs, on the edge of losing consciousness from the adrenaline and fear coursing through him. He cannot lose Aziraphale. Not now, not after everything.

The contact dissipates on his cheek, and for a moment he thinks she must have gone. Tears leak heavy down the sides of his face to soak the pillow, his throat closing up, and still his muscles will not obey, his magic too weak to carry him. He hadn't expected her to help him or Aziraphale, but he had hoped. He had hoped that her showing up after so long would be something other than another punishment.

"Oh, no more of that, Starshaper," she tells him, with all the tenderness of a bone-deep bruise. "Come here. Give me one of your flighted wings."

Though he does not think he can move, and does not want to give her _anything_, he somehow lifts the wing closest to her, one of the two used for flight, and she takes it gently. She smooths her other hand along the patagium, and then meets his eyes in a way she has never done before. He has the wings, now, to cover his eyes and shield himself from her but finds that she had been right. He has no need of them.

"You were willing to give all of yourself to protect him," she says, so plain a truth that it aches. "Are you still?"

"Yes," he answers, without hesitation.

"Then give of yourself to me," she tells him, but gently. It is a request, not a demand, and he understands why. He had already used anything he might have given her. What he has left is barely enough to keep him alive- giving up even a little will kill him, and they both know it.

But it is _Aziraphale_, and so Crowley nods his consent.

She strokes one palm down his primary feathers, and the holy light inside of him responds to her touch, following the contact. Beneath her fingers the rich, black color fades, leaving clean, white feathers limned in black, and when she draws her hand away, some vital part of himself comes with it.

He has just enough time to think how very much his wing looks like that of a magpie before the drain of his power sends him face first into oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

Some part of Aziraphale had expected retaliation for his actions. He had killed an archangel, after all, and that sort of thing didn't go unnoticed for long, especially not when the attack had been so blatantly obvious. Humans had seen it, though at the time Aziraphale had been a bit too distracted to care while trying to get Crowley to move out of the way so he would have a clear path to Gabriel's exposed essence.

Afterward, he'd been too wrapped up in trying to keep Crowley from slipping through his fingers. He'd been unable to get Crowley to respond to him and the only way to clear the street was to force his own magic past Crowley's badly-damaged defenses and manipulate his return to human form from the inside. It had been a last resort, damaging to himself nearly as much as it had damaged Crowley, but it had been the only way.

Worse than that kind of merge without permission, Aziraphale had been forced to leave behind a sizable amount of magic just to hold Crowley together until he could get them both safely back to the bookshop. Flight would have destroyed what was left of Crowley, and there had been no time to get them back manually, but Aziraphale had managed to get enough of his own magic into him for a desperate teleport he would never have attempted under any other circumstances.

Crowley had been out of magic and losing blood and Aziraphale had had to do his best to heal enough of the damage to feel safe leaving to seek help. Blessedly, Crowley had only woken once during that process, but his screams continue to haunt Aziraphale. He might never be rid of them if Crowley does not wake to soothe over the memories with words.

Not knowing what else to do at that point, Aziraphale had left Crowley unconscious in the bedroom and gone to fetch Anathema. Her magic was human and, unlike Aziraphale's holy magic, wouldn't hurt Crowley worse just by being used. Anathema had been confused when he turned up, but when he had held out his hand, she had taken it, and he had flown them both back to the bookshop.

Crowley had woken up once for her, as well, still screaming in pain, and Aziraphale had tried to explain the situation to him as quickly as he could through the way his heart had climbed into his throat. He had held himself together well enough until Crowley lost consciousness again, and then he'd had to excuse himself to stand in another room until his hands stopped shaking and he could breathe without risk of a dry sob interrupting.

Anathema had come to find him a few minutes after he’d finally calmed, to tell him that she didn't think there was anything else she could do. She had set the breaks she knew how to set and stitched the wounds that she could stitch, and bandaged everything that needed it. The bite wound to his chest had been deep, but as Aziraphale had explained it wouldn't get infected, she hadn't thought it would kill him.

The magic damage had been the worst, and there had been nothing she could do about it. That will only heal with time, maybe more time than Crowley has because Aziraphale had had to patch it with his own. The holy light, while serving to hold him together, will slow the generation of his own magic. In theory, the patch should give Crowley all the time in the world to recover, but in practice if enough of his own magic cannot regenerate in time, the transfusion will start to out-damage his ability to heal past it, and it will kill him. Aziraphale will need to remove it before that time, and hope for the best.

He steps outside Anathema's house, the door clicking shut behind him. He'd left Anathema explaining the situation to Newt, after they had assured Aziraphale he could come back for her again if Crowley needed more. He hopes that will not be necessary. If Crowley cannot heal himself from here, he won't do so at all.

He unfurls his wings, taking a moment and a deep breath and to prepare himself for what he will find upon returning. Crowley will need him, and he is already exhausted. One heartbeat. Two, three.

He spreads his wings for flight, and is yanked out of Earth's dimension and slammed right into the bright, cold glory of Heaven.

* * *

Aziraphale comes out of the teleport with his wings up and his sword out, but no one attacks him. In fact, all of the gathered angels stand meters away from him, spread around the edges of the room except for Michael, who still stands calmly back a safe distance with his hands folded in front of him, waiting.

"Lower your weapon," Michael says, without inflection. It is not a warning or a threat, and Aziraphale doesn't heed. "We haven't called you here to hurt you."

"Then release me," Aziraphale hisses, wings flaring further and halo shining at full intensity. He's one push away from slipping into his trueform. He won't stand a chance if they choose to fight, but he had bluffed his way out of Hell and Crowley had struck fear into them only a year ago, and he _had_ just slain an Archangel.

"We shall," Michael tells him. "We only have some questions. Please lower your weapon."

"Ask," Aziraphale says, not moving a muscle.

Michael purses his lips, but does not protest again. "We've called to ask if you have seen Gabriel."

"I have," Aziraphale responds, and offers nothing else. Some mixture of relief and regret washes over his face in a way Aziraphale cannot parse but that has him lowering his weapon. "What happened?"

Letting out a heavy breath, Michael seems to resign himself to his next words. "After the... botched business with the apocalypse, Gabriel was removed from his position, much the same way you were when you failed to guard the Eastern gate."

"I doubt that," Aziraphale says with more than enough disdain to cut through bullshit. "He still had all his wings when I saw him."

"That was Gabriel's decision," Michael reminds him, but his tone says he knows exactly how meaningless that assurance is now.

"Will you be getting to the _point_ anytime soon?" Aziraphale inquires.

Michael shifts and for the first time glances to the others for something, perhaps reassurance, perhaps aid, but no one else is willing to step forward. His fingers twist together a little, but he finally surrenders. "We've lost track of him," he admits. "He left here yesterday, in a fit after the demotion. I followed him for a bit, but he lost me somewhere around Egypt. I had thought he might have come for you, and he has, it seems."

"And you think I know where he went," Aziraphale concludes. So they don't know what had happened. They don't know what he's done. Well, he thinks. "You're right. I do." He bares his teeth in a smile, letting all of the wrath he'd felt at seeing Crowley so injured show. "He came to me, and I killed him."

The sharp sound of indrawn breaths collectively echo from all of the angels in the room. "_You_ did? But you're- how-" Michael splutters, looking less dignified than Aziraphale has ever seen him. He can't help but wonder how he ever followed anyone here. "He's truly dead?"

Aziraphale nods. "By my sword. As you will be if you try to keep me here."

"They won't," says a soft voice behind him, and Aziraphale stiffens. He hasn't heard Her voice in over six thousand years. "You're coming with me."

There is a sickening twist in his gut, and the light of Heaven winks out. In truth, everything else winks out, too.

* * *

As soon as Aziraphale's senses return, he knows that he is no longer on Earth. He is not in Heaven or in Hell, nor in the vastness of space. He has been taken to the hidden space between universes, the space they cannot cross, the space that binds them to their own universe. Every direction is the same as any direction, and nothing quite has to make sense. Aziraphale has heard tales of such spaces, though he has never actually visited them, or honestly believed they really existed.

Still, being in one, he finds them a bit harder to deny.

Here, he exists with no mortal form to bind him. Here he exists how he ought to, with both shimmering, white wings arced out to their fullest and all of his heads manifest, the power of each beastly aspect available to him at once. His long-fingered hands do not resemble anything of earth and the halo that humans so love to depict as a crown encompasses his entire body, a wreath of light thrown off of him into the emptiness. _Let there be light_, God had once commanded, and all the angels had obeyed thusly, and Aziraphale is no exception, even now.

Before him, or perhaps behind or around him, it is hard to tell in such a warped, bendy environment, sits a sphere very much like a planet in a color Aziraphale has never seen before. Love swirls through the patina of time coating its mirror-smooth surface, leaving a burning memory of passion and grief in its wake. Tendrils of light arc and split off of it like solar flares, bending and warping back the way particles do around black holes, creation and destruction in one. The beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega.

God.

Aziraphale's perception wobbles severely, but there is nowhere to fall to or from, only the endless infinity of in between and God, everywhere it is possible to be. His head hurts with the intensity of Her existence, and he is forced to close his eyes, though it does nothing to block Her out; She is behind his eyelids and in his bones and coiled up tight in his heart.

Always, he has known that his essence, his magic, his entire being is wrapped up in Hers, but he finally understands what that _means_ as he stands before Her, helpless except to exist, each of them a part of the other. He lets go of himself, because holding onto something so trivial takes too much from him, and She catches him gently, gently, gently.

_ Aziraphale_.

She knows him the way no other being ever will or could. Every piece of him She had crafted Herself; every atom, every space between, laid carefully in place by Her. Without any doubt at all, he knows that She loves him, every part of him, and that this is true for every other creature or thing she has ever crafted. She loves them, more than Aziraphale can fathom even being witness to it, even being made_ of_ love, and for just a moment, Aziraphale understands _why_ angels were made to love everything the way they do. He understands why the seraphim were made to sing to Her.

She is alone.

_ Oh,_ he says, finding a voice that has no words. _I'm here._

It can't matter much. One pinprick of existence against everything yet to be, one atom of water in the ocean, but he's _here_ and that means she is not alone.

_ I know_, she tells him,_ I brought you here. __I made you._

Loss tugs at him, draining something from him, and it is her, as she withdraws, coalesces into something recognizable, the space around them swirling and bending and stretching, the bright and dark of it shattering until it settles. Aziraphale blinks, his feet suddenly on a flecked linoleum floor, caged in by four walls that seem claustrophobic after the expanse of what lies beyond the boundary of the universe. A dim, yellow light flickers overhead, illuminating enough of the room for Aziraphale to see there are no doors or windows.

And in front of him stands a young girl, barely older than Adam and his friends had been when Aziraphale first met them.

"What- what's going on?" he asks helplessly, before he can think not to. She hasn't shown herself to him in six millennia and while normally he might be overjoyed to see her and speak with her again, he_ needs_ to get back to Crowley. "Where are we?"

"Where we were," she says, her form preternaturally still and her voice carrying no echo in the small space. "I've shifted your perception of it a bit so we could speak. I've just come from your bookshop."

"My- You went-" He swallows down his fear. Crowley is the only reason she could possibly have wanted to go to his bookshop, and given Crowley's damaged state, anything could have happened when she got there. "Why?"

"He was dying," she says, heedless of the wrench that puts in Aziraphale's heart. "I found him burning himself out trying to hold onto the holy light you put within him. He wouldn't let you go. Can you imagine that? A demon trying to keep itself alive with the grace of Heaven?"

He feels very much the same way he did when Sandalphon hit him in the gut, except there's no indication that it will lessen or pass. He is afraid to ask the only question he has, afraid of what the answer will be, and even more afraid not to know it. "Did you save him?"

She gives him a look laden with all sorts of things he doesn't understand and one that he does: pity. "Would you like what is left of who he was?"

Aziraphale's eyes and throat close up, leaving him speechless, but he manages to nod. If not even God, herself, had been able to save Crowley, the least he can do is protect whatever she took. He knows it must be some portion of Crowley's essence, to have made it to this place, some small piece of who Crowley had been that Aziraphale might use to make something new.

When she touches his hand, cool darkness floods in, and Aziraphale welcomes it. He feels the ghostly coil of Crowley's scales upon his mortal skin as Crowley's magic finds his core and burrows in to stay. The cold burns, but Aziraphale wraps his own essence around it protectively, harboring it. He will die before he gives it up again.

"An Archangel lies slain because of you," she says, without releasing his hand.

In any other circumstance, Aziraphale thinks he might have felt a certain amount of dread at those words. However, he has nothing worthwhile left to lose anymore, and that fact forges his iron core to steel. "I ended what he started," he says evenly. "And he deserved what he got, for acting so poorly out of Pride and Wrath. Cast me down, if you must."

She smiles then, reaching both hands up to rest gently on either side of his face. "Cast you down?" she asks, so fondly. "Even if that was my desire, my lionheart, I cannot cast you out from where you are already gone. Tell me, do you wish to return?"

"Not to them," he says, heart aching. Cool, serpentine magic soothes in, easing that old wound. Since the apocalypse, he had realized more and more how badly he had never fit in with the other angels.

"Good," she says, and then she finally releases him.

Rather than backing away, however, she lowers her hands to reach within him, through his corporation and directly into his essence with no warning at all. The contact sears, scalding across his angelic senses, and he is dimly aware that he screams as he drops to his knees, but she does not release him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders if this is what Falling feels like, if she will cast him down after all, right up until she slicks a hand over his shoulders and pulls forth the wings Gabriel had taken from him millennia ago. They stretch out, following her hand like eager puppies, until she steps back, out of range, and then he has control of them.

He collapses forward, catching himself on his hands. He has no need to breathe, and isn't sure there is air here anyway, but habit draws panting breaths into his lungs to steady him.

She has healed him.

"You love him," she says, before he has recovered. "Eden's serpent. You have since he reassured you on the wall. You were willing to give up all of Heaven to stay with him. Willing to kill your own kind for him."

"I killed Gabriel for _me_," Aziraphale spits out, folding all four of his wings back to himself. He stares at the floor, not sure if he can face her just yet, and certainly not without shaking.

He can hear the smile in her tone. "What an indulgent creature you've become, then." She kneels in front of him and waits patiently until he sits back on his heels to regard her. "And if it hadn't been Gabriel? If someone else had come for him, first? If I had come for him?"

Aziraphale's heart twists and he tightens his grip on Crowley's remnant. He knows the answer as well as she does. Aziraphale has given up a lot of things in his long life, but he has to draw a line somewhere- if his line just happens to resemble a certain snake, well, that's fine with him.

"I thought as much," she says, without ire. "And would you still give yourself up to protect him?"

Aziraphale does not hesitate to respond: "Yes."

"Then give of yourself to me," she tells him, and hope blooms in his chest that she will somehow still save Crowley if he obeys. "Let me see your flighted wings."

He presents them both to her without struggle, and she draws a finger down each of his primaries. The white of the feathers lifts behind her touch, leaving black marks that Crowley's essence bleeds into on the surface. When she draws her hand away, something of Aziraphale goes with it, and he can feel Crowley's magic settle into the hollow left behind. Something is different about him, but he cannot tell what. He extends his second set of wings, and feels them brush against something else, something powerful, and he has the distinct sense that he is not _alone_ in a way he hadn't known he'd been alone before.

"What did you do?" he asks, touching a hand to his chest. Beneath his palm, his heart beats.

"Go home, little one," she instructs. "I will come to you again tomorrow."

Without another word or another anything at all, Aziraphale finds himself standing in the middle of the dais in his bookshop. Sunlight streams in through the windows above, and his mortal senses all fire up double-time with the flood of stimulus. He groans and holds his head, trying to tone down the sensation. Everything feels strangely new, the way it had felt when he first got his corporation, raw and overwhelming. He supposes that's what comes of hanging out in the original ether, the space between universes- God's domain.

He wrestles it under control after a few moments, left only with a vague, stubborn headache and the strangest sensation of company. He had been connected to the Heavenly host, once upon a time, until Gabriel had taken the wings the Almighty had returned to him today. It has been long enough that Aziraphale assumes he must have forgotten what it felt like, but the sensation is not nearly as vast as he remembers. It feels...quiet, almost. Warm. Soft the way the sunlight feels in the morning.

It's something to hold onto, he thinks, in light of his grief, which comes barreling back the moment he has a handle on the rest of his senses.

Crowley is gone.

The thought slams into him full force, and he's hit his knees before it registers that he's falling. There's nothing to hold on to, nothing to catch himself on, nothing to steady himself, so he curls inward, reaching for the cold comfort of Crowley's essence. It greets him with familiarity it shouldn't really have, considering he has so rarely even come close to touching Crowley's true form, but familiarity is what he needs, so he wraps himself around it and gives himself over to his grief.

Six thousand years.

Six _thousand_ years, gone just like that. Stolen. Destroyed.

Six thousand years stretching out in front of him, empty of Crowley's indulgent smile, of the way his voice would go soft in the small hours of the morning, of rides in the Bentley or dinners at the Ritz or the gentle companionship they had shared through so many plays and shows and evenings in together.

Perhaps the worst of all of it is that he cannot help but feel responsible. He should never have left Crowley alone. He should have been here to pry the light from Crowley’s hands before it became too much. He should have _been here_. Aziraphale should have _saved him,_ the way Crowley had saved Aziraphale over and over and over. Crowley had always been there, saving him one way or another, and now, when he had been needed most, he'd been off doing what- returning a human to her home? Squaring off against the very creatures that had put them in this position? Getting a lecture from God?

A harsh noise drags out of him and the tendril of Crowley's essence presses against where it hurts inside, soothing and small and stressed. Aziraphale reins in all of the hurt and the anger and the guilt, and forces himself to refocus his attention, offering comfort in return.

He still has something, he tells himself firmly.

And he is an _angel_. He is an immortal creature with _real magic_, as Crowley had told him so many times. Surely he can find some way to fix this. Surely there is still hope.

"Right," he says to the empty room as he sits up straight. "I just have to figure out what to do next." He hesitates long enough to wipe at his eyes and fix his clothing, and then he takes a deep breath and lets it out. "She'll be back tomorrow. Maybe she has a plan. Maybe she can-"

Well, he doesn't know what he thinks she can do, but she'd created the whole universe, and if she can't do anything, Adam had given Aziraphale his body back once before, surely he will at least have some ideas.

Aziraphale will figure something out. He will solve this.

After another steadying breath, he climbs to his feet and dusts himself off and steels himself to go upstairs. There will be a mess there, but perhaps something he can use- blood or feathers or _something_ that he will need if he's to bring Crowley back, and everyone knows its best to work with fresh materials or at least freshly preserved ones.

So he climbs the stairs and stands at the top of them, staring at the partially closed bedroom door. He can see the edge of a feather beyond the crack, and it occurs to him then that there may be more than just feathers or blood. That Crowley's entire corporation may have been left behind, and Aziraphale doesn't know what to do with that information. He just stands there, heart beating too loud, Crowley's essence curving and coiling excitedly in his chest, and that strange, new feeling burning around inside of him, bright and too present for how absent Aziraphale feels.

Eventually, he manages to put one foot in front of the other again, until he stands before the door. He gives it a gentle touch with the tips of his fingers, just enough to swing it on squeaky hinges to reveal exactly what he had been afraid of.

Crowley, spread limply over the bed, one wing flopped bonelessly over the edge so that his primaries sag heavily on the ground. The long, sleek feathers have the same pattern as Aziraphale's do now, but in reverse, white streaks marring his black wings, evidence of Aziraphale’s fatal folly.

His throat closes up and he shuts his eyes against the sight of Crowley lying there, so still. Too still.

He'd been a fool to think he could handle this. His wings loosen. He needs to get out. He needs to get as far from here as he can. He needs to forget for a little while, at least, just until-

"'Ziraphale?"


	3. Chapter 3

Something deep and warm and primal rouses Crowley from slumber. He can feel it inside of him, foreign but not, aching and utterly broken. He reaches for it on instinct, soothes himself over it to quiet it, and realizes that he has the strength to do so. Not the strength for much else, but sinking into the heat of this energy feels almost healing, in itself, the way a hot bath treats aching muscles. Crowley hadn’t known how badly his entire being had ached until he finds relief.

Time ebbs and flows around him and he clings to the one sensation that doesn't hurt, and tries to piece together what had happened to him. Gabriel had come for them, or at least for Aziraphale, and Crowley had gotten in the way. In truth, Crowley had tried to _kill_ Gabriel, but even the might of a Saraph angel does not compare to the wrath of an Archangel. Desperation and sheer will are all that account for the length of their encounter.

And Aziraphale, Crowley thinks distantly.

Aziraphale had struck him with a sword Crowley did not recognize.

But it had not cut him, and Gabriel had not killed him, so it stood to reason that whatever Aziraphale's intent, it had been in Crowley's interest. The holy light now cradled in the core of Crowley's being speaks to that much, as well. Aziraphale had tried to save him with his own magic, and if Crowley is any judge at all, it is working. His own magic is creeping back to him, and the light that had hurt him so badly earlier had begun gently seeping into his wounds to knit them.

It is slow work, but sure enough.

Some of the healing is aided by mortal stitching that will need to be removed soon. Aziraphale must have somehow brought Anathema here, Crowley guesses, pulling at the threads of woozy memory stuck in a glue-like haze of agony. She had helped. She had _probably_ helped, anyway. She had stitched him closed and bound his wing, though it lay unbound now. He tries to raise it to see and only manages to flop it out of the bed onto the floor where it remains, listless as he loses his grasp on his corporation again.

As he lies, he thinks fuzzily that there is something else.

Something else had happened.

He'd had a... dream. A vision? He doesn’t think demons can have dreams, but maybe they can have visions. Hallucinations, perhaps, pain-induced.

This particular one is vague and a bit wavery, the way heat shimmers in the desert, and it could not have been real, because God had been there, and she hasn't been seen by anyone in millennia. And even though he can’t quite catch the memory of what happened, he knows he hadn't done enough yelling at her for it to have been real. He has got a lot of yelling at her saved up still and doesn’t feel that he had spent a lick of it.

The new warm-soft presence that feels like a sunbeam on a cat's fur rouses and begins to shift, drawing his attention. Crowley takes the hint and backs off, a little exhaustion washing over him, the sort of bone-deep tiredness that chases on the heels of being healed when one finally has a chance to crash afterward. He thinks he blacks out for a second from the pure, sweet rush of it, because the next thing he knows, the hinges on the bedroom door are squeaking open and someone else is there.

Crowley struggles to fit himself back into his mortal corporation the right way to make any part of him cooperate. He's been so far outside of himself, reveling so deeply in that unfamiliar feeling of home, that he almost can't remember how to move a wing or a leg or even an eyelid. When he does manage to get a grip, all of the pain that had come with his injuries the first time slams back into his awareness, paralyzing him until it passes.

Then he hears it.

Barely a sound, barely a breath, but the smallest noise of pain from across the room, from what Crowley has no doubts is Aziraphale's throat.

He's come back. He's come _home_.

"'Ziraphale?" Crowley manages, slurry and worn, like he's been shouting for days. He thinks maybe he has been. Everything feels so _raw_ and he just wants to _sleep_.

That broken thing inside of him responds to the word like the crest of a wave, surging up and cascading down to warm him in a way he hasn't experienced since he first put scales upon his skin. It is a bright and lovely thing, even wounded, and in his near-delirium, Crowley finds himself thinking it is almost familiar.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale's voice cracks over the word, his tone fraught with the sort of grief that tells Crowley more than he wants to know about the severity of his situation. All of his attention turns to Aziraphale. "You're alive!"

Crowley manages enough control of his corporation to drag his sagging wing off the floor and out of the way as Aziraphale stumbles to him from the doorway. He hesitates at the edge of the bed and Crowley can almost feel his anxiety, his fear that he’ll hurt Crowley by jostling him. Instead, he drops to his knees beside the bed, one of his wings cresting up to cover Crowley. Aziraphale drapes himself as close as he can get without climbing on the bed with him and warmth floods through Crowley like a balm, inside and out, even before Aziraphale's soft palm comes to rest on his jaw.

"Oh, she- I thought you'd gone, my dear," Aziraphale murmurs, leaning just far enough forward to touch his forehead to Crowley's. He’s trembling, but Crowley doesn’t have enough left to move to comfort him. "I thought I'd lost you."

Dizzy with the oddly intimate sensation of Aziraphale's relief on the wrong side of his skin, Crowley shakes his head a little. "I had a weird dream," he manages to say, which is not what he'd intended at all. However, he can hardly be blamed, as in the next moment, he loses even that tenuous grip on reality, and slips back into the quiet dark of unconsciousness.

* * *

Crowley wakes to white.

All around him, everything is white, white, white.

There is softness, behind him, softness in the arm around his waist, softness in the feather of breath across the nape of his neck, and he realizes Aziraphale has done his very best impression of a snake in order to wrap Crowley up entirely in his arms and wings and legs and _mind_. The warm comfort of love blankets over him, heavy and sweet and if it can't actually heal, it certainly makes him forget a little of the pain he had been in for what has felt like eternity.

He reaches within himself for the light that Aziraphale had given him, but it has been almost entirely used up in the healing process. Disappointment curls in his gut, even though he knows that is for the best. Demons are not meant to harbor that kind of magic anymore. He is lucky to have survived it at all.

Even luckier, the pain has faded quite a bit, and Crowley dares to think that he’s actually going to mend completely. His wing, broken against Gabriel’s face he now remembers, is whole and well, kept folded by Aziraphale’s arm over them. He flexes his damaged shoulder a little and although the skin pulls tight, it no longer feels like Gabriel’s teeth are still in him tearing him apart. Tentatively, he takes a breath, and finds that it feels tighter than usual but he can do it.

"'Ziraph'le?" he slurs, feeling very much like he's being slowly trapped in liquid amber and he can’t say he minds that much. He's alive. He knows that he probably shouldn't be, but he is, which is a very unusual turn of events. And something is _different_ which he isn't sure is _better_, but it's _something_ at least.

"Shh," Aziraphale whispers, lips against his skin, his grasp tightening minutely for only a second before relaxing, obviously aware of how tender Crowley still is, yet unwilling to leave him without comfort. Crowley's neck feels damp, as if Aziraphale has been crying. "You're safe. We're both safe."

"W'happened?" He closes his eyes to block out the white of Aziraphale's wings, too bright for the pounding of his head. He remembers some of it still, better than the last time he woke, but much of it is still fuzzy and out of focus, still dream-like. Gabriel, Aziraphale, Anathema, and then... "You left."

Aziraphale's body gives a tremble that Crowley cannot mistake for anything other than what it is. Aziraphale is crying.

"I'm so sorry," Aziraphale mumbles into the nape of his neck. "I'm so sorry I took too long to help you, I'm sorry that I hurt you when I was trying to help, I'm sorry that-"

"No, no, don't-" Crowley protests, struggling in Aziraphale's hold. Angels shouldn’t cry, and they _certainly_ should not cry over demons. They _can't_, or nothing will make sense anymore. "Hey..."

He finally gets himself turned around in Aziraphale's grasp, tamping down on the somewhat unexpected surge of pain – better apparently does not mean_ fixed – _now that he seems to have the magic back to do so, and what he finds is unbearable. Aziraphale's eyes are red and he looks as though he hasn't slept in a week. In truth, he looks as though he might _break_ and although Crowley has seen that a few times in their long lives, it had never been like _this_.

"Don't do that, don't- you didn't do anything wrong," Crowley assures him gently. "You _saved_ me."

"_She_ saved you," Aziraphale tells him, not quite sharply but not quite not, and either way Crowley recognizes whatever sword Aziraphale's words are holding, it's not pointed at him. "I couldn't- I couldn't get your magic stabilized or stop the bleeding, and then-" His breath catches, halting his words until they stumble past the hold up. "And then Heaven snatched me up, and God told me you had- that you were-"

"_God_ told you?" Crowley interrupts, vision darkening as his heartbeat speeds up and sends him a bit dizzy. He groans and closes his eyes against the sickening vertigo. "You saw god?" It was e'd thought that was a dream.

Aziraphale takes a few deep, calming breaths. "Can we talk about this later? I don't feel very well."

"Join the club," Crowley mutters, and jumps to course correct when he opens his eyes to Aziraphale's distraught face. "It's not your fault! I'm just-" He scrapes for something reassuring and finally lands on: "I'm here, alright? Hurts, but I am."

Though he looks as if he might apologize again, Aziraphale purses his lips and nods a little. "I'm glad that you are."

Crowley wants to push the issue, wants to press Aziraphale for information, but exhaustion is already dragging at him again. He has no business being _tired_, but this is no mortal fatigue. He had damaged and worn out his true self, the one that mattered, and the healing fugue he will need to wallow in cannot be avoided, not even for all the burning questions he has.

Aside from that, he thinks perhaps he knows enough now to put some pieces of the puzzle together. He'd drained his magic fighting Gabriel, almost to the null point, and Aziraphale had taken a huge risk to try to save him by putting the wrong fuel in Crowley's tank. Crowley suspects that if he were a little different, a little more infernal, a little more loyal to Hell, that the action would have destroyed him immediately. That certainly would have been the case before the nonpocalypse.

But he is a little more human now, and Aziraphale a little less holy, and where they meet in the middle it apparently still hurts, but not unbearably so. Crowley should know, after all- he'd born it.

However, not all wounds are made equal, and Crowley had never been very good at not asking questions or doing what he’s supposed to do, so he doesn’t pass out _or_ leave it alone.

"I wasn't sure you would be." The words eke out of him like the last few drops from a jar of honey. "You struck me. With your sword."

"I didn't," Aziraphale rushes to say, and then colors. "I mean, I did, but not to hurt you. I needed your fire to-" He hesitates, and cannot meet Crowley's eyes then. "Well. Gabriel's dead."

Crowley freezes, belly dropping right past his toes and down into Hell.

_ Do you know what he did for you?_

That _cannot_ have been real.

"Dead discorporated or dead dead...?" he asks carefully, mind skittering away from the almost-memory of a dream that, by the second, seems less and less like a dream.

"Dead dead," Aziraphale confirms, and Crowley makes a wounded noise.

_ Aziraphale will face the others for it._

"Tell me you didn't, angel," Crowley begs, already twisting to try to get a look at Aziraphale's wings. Crowley cannot take one more broken thing, cannot bear to see Aziraphale Fall. He cannot bear to pick up the pieces of what lands. "Tell me you didn't kill a bloody Archangel, they'll-"

Crowley's next words are lost in the soft _oof_ as Aziraphale pulls him away from his urgent search and presses a hand to his aching chest, effectively pinning Crowley to the bed as Aziraphale sits up. Aziraphale's wings mantle around them, feathers spread wide, and Crowley's heart breaks to see the black patterns on his primaries. He settles astride Crowley's thighs with a stern look on his face as he removes his hand from Crowley's chest.

"Whatever you were about to say just now, I suggest you reconsider ever saying," Aziraphale tells him matter-of-factly. "We're on our own side, you said so yourself. Heaven can't cast me down; I've already leapt. And it- it wasn't today or yesterday or last month. It wasn't because the world nearly ended and you asked me to stay with you. Before all of that, they ordered me to fight, and I- I told them I'd lost my sword." He has the good grace to look chagrined when Crowley chokes out a puff of laughter through the rest of the emotions threatening to strangle him.

"I'm not sure that counts as a rebellion," Crowley manages.

Aziraphale pulls a small moue, and then looks into the middle distance, clearly fighting for words, himself. "No, I suppose not," he says finally. "Though telling them I had no intention of fighting, and then using the teleportation globe without permission to go off and find a demon and possess a human may have."

"Possibly," Crowley agrees, near to choking on all of the questions he has. Aziraphale had never told him how he'd come back after the bookshop burned down. Of course Crowley had seen his possession of Madam Tracy, but he's done a very good job of forgetting to wonder about it too closely. "But your wings didn't change before."

He reaches up and Aziraphale doesn't shy away from letting him curl his fingers into the white underwing coverts. The black is contained for now to just Aziraphale's primaries, still rimmed entirely by white, the same way-

"My wings!" Crowley practically shouts, startling both himself and Aziraphale so badly they both jump. Crowley's wings twitch hard and Aziraphale moves his own so that Crowley can see the identical white patterns in the black of his wings. It almost looks as though they had traded; a little bit of black for a little bit of white. He raises both brows in question and Aziraphale mirrors the motion.

“You don’t remember…?”

“Do I look like I remember?” Crowley says, although before he’s even finished saying it, something bright and dark and painful flickers across his memory. He’d given up something. Something _important_. She’d asked him to surrender himself, to save Aziraphale, and now Aziraphale sits above him, whole and well. The warmth inside of him swirls, as if he has called its name. “Did she- in you…?”

While that might have been unintelligible to anyone else, Aziraphale nods a little, jaw clenching for a second. “She asked me to- to take what was _left_ of you, as if you’d just- as if you-”

“Hey,” Crowley murmurs, his hands coming up to rest on Aziraphale’s knees, his thumbs stroking soothingly back and forth. “I didn’t. I’m right here.”

Aziraphale’s lips purse like he’s trying not to let something spill out of him, and he nods. “I know. But you almost weren’t. And I just- I’m so-”

“It’s fine,” Crowley mumbles, even though he’s not sure it really is. They’ve been through worse than Hell since walking out of that bookshop, and it doesn’t feel like they’re out of the water yet, even though they appear to be dry. “You don’t have to say it, angel. I’m glad I’m alive too.”

There _must_ be something more to say, he thinks desperately, something that’s hidden behind his teeth for far too long, but that warm, eager thing within him that had been so polite as to calm down until now, surges about anew, making it impossible to think about anything else. Crowley closes his eyes and grabs hold of it to still it, only to hear Aziraphale gasp like he’s been socked in the gut. Crowley opens his eyes, worried, and finds Aziraphale staring at him wide-eyed.

“Let go,” Aziraphale tells him, choked.

Crowley’s hold on the new part of his essence loosens, and Aziraphale relaxes minutely. “Oh,” Crowley says, finally beginning to understand. The feelings and the wings and the way this thing inside of him acts and- “Sh-She bonded us.”

“So it would seem,” Aziraphale agrees tightly, one hand rubbing absently at his chest.

Slowly, gently, Crowley strokes and apology over the familar-unfamiliar essence burrowed so thoroughly amidst his own as to be indistinguishable to anyone who isn’t Crowley, and Aziraphale closes his eyes with a small sound of relief. _That_ is interesting, Crowley thinks, but he does not do it again.

“She didn’t finish it proper,” he points out.

“No,” Aziraphale agrees again. “I don’t think it’s a soul bond at all, actually. Neither of us would be able to tell ourselves apart, and you clearly know what bit’s mine.”

Crowley can’t help his smile, and Aziraphale spots it with enough time to frown before the next words escape Crowley’s lips. “So you’re saying I’ve got a little bit-”

“Enough,” Aziraphale warns him, already slipping off of him to stand. “If you’re up to joking, you should come downstairs. Whatever she’s done, she promised me she’d be back today, and I suspect you’d like to be ready for that.”

Whatever ease Crowley had felt at their banter, it is ruined by the knowledge that they’re not finished yet. She’s still playing games, still yanking them around. They haven’t escaped at all. “When?”

Aziraphale gives a helpless shrug. “I wish I knew. I expect it won’t be long- she seems to have something up her sleeve.”

Well, Crowley thinks, struggling up so that he can sit on the edge of the bed. The world lists severely to one side and he sits blinking against his nature until it passes. If he is going to have to take more of God’s bullshit, he isn’t going to do so lying down again.

* * *

In moving his flat from where it had lived downtown for decades, Crowley had had to do an amount of rearranging and condensing. The bookshop, while quite a large establishment for a shop downtown, had not been quite the right shape or size to accommodate. So it is that Crowley’s washroom now connects directly to the bedroom, which is just as well, as he barely makes it into the tub without assistance.

Aziraphale hovers nearby the entire time, discreetly wringing his hands but unwilling to interfere unless Crowley asks for help. Which he won’t, Crowley decides, because he can get out of his bandages and what remains of his clothing by himself, even though his jeans are a close affair that involves a lot of lying on the washroom floor and wiggling. His shoulder screams at him the entire time and his magic sloshes just under the surface, ready to be used, but not really enough to be wasting on frivolous miracles like clothing removal or cleaning himself off. Especially not when they know God is on her way but not what she intends to do when she arrives.

Still, he manages. Aziraphale perches on the closed toilet and watches, alert to catch Crowley if he should lose consciousness and fall, but Crowley gets through an entire shower without collapsing. The water even feels nice, especially on the tender new parts of him that are trying to heal too quickly now that his mortal body has access to magic again. Crowley takes it as a good sign, and accepts the biggest, fluffiest towel Aziraphale manages to miracle up for him without argument.

Later, when he has mostly dried off and gotten into clean clothes and settled himself on the couch, Aziraphale brings him tea and sets his own cup on the table and then moves his chair over to sit beside the couch. Crowley stares at him quizzically, until Aziraphale holds out his hands and nods toward Crowley’s damp wings. With a small smile, Crowley obliges, laying one dark wing into Aziraphale’s lap.

Aziraphale, Crowley had learned, needs something to do with his hands when he’s anxious and quite luckily for the both of them, Crowley’s feathers are many, many things to do. As Aziraphale’s fingers begin to slide over individual feathers, coaxing the barbs together to right ruffled, damp vanes, Crowley relaxes. Within, he can feel the warmth of Aziraphale’s presence, relaxing by increments as well.

About halfway through his third wing, Aziraphale hesitates, stiffening a little, which is all the warning Crowley gets before a voice cuts through the silence.

“An angel grooming a demon’s wings- wonders never cease. Although I suppose I designed them that way, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Crowley’s entire body jerks at the first few words and Aziraphale releases his wing so that he may fold it. To Crowley’s relief, he has recovered more than enough to fold his wings out of sight, but rather than do so, Crowley hauls himself unsteadily to his feet to face her.

“You,” he hisses.

“Hello, Crowley,” she greets, with the same level, soft tone as always. “Aziraphale.”

Beside him, Aziraphale nods a greeting but doesn’t speak. Crowley spares him only a sidelong glance to check in before fixing his full attention back to the Almighty. “What are you doing here?”

She smiles, and Crowley has to fight against the nearly nauseating desire to smile in return. “Hopefully I’ll be finishing what I started,” she says simply, gesturing to the two of them.

Crowley has no need to ask what she means. The bond. Whatever way she had connected the two of them, it was unfinished, still frayed at the edges, awaiting the final stitches. He lets out a shaky breath. “You had no right, doing that without telling us what it was.”

She raises both eyebrows, although he knows she cannot possibly be surprised. “Would you rather I rescind it? There’s still time.”

For just a second, Crowley nearly hackles at the remark, right up until he realizes… he isn’t afraid of her. She has threatened to unmake him, but he had just been willing to be unmade by less. Gabriel had nearly destroyed him. _Aziraphale_ had nearly destroyed him on _accident_ afterward. And Crowley… in his continued effort to save Aziraphale, Crowley had offered his life to her, his very existence, that which makes him what he is, and in doing so, he has become something _else_.

Something which fears no god, Almighty or otherwise.

She smiles again, this time with a fondness that brooks no sharp edges. “There you go. You’re getting it. Do you know why I cast you down, Crowley?”

“For asking questions,” Crowley says, feeling strangely calm now.

Her brows twitch as though to say_ that’s fair_. “No,” she tells him. “I cast you down because there are no _answers_ in Heaven. It is a place of unquestioning obedience. Necessary, the way so many things are, but ultimately not for you. You had too many questions to belong to such a place.”

He feels a little sick. “There had to have been a better way to go about that.”

“Perhaps from some perspectives,” she concedes. “Yours, for now. That’s why I am here. I’d like to offer you a different one.”

“A different perspective?” Crowley asks, a bit of his long-held anger flaring. “We’re well past that.”

“Aziraphale?” she asks, holding Crowley’s gaze for a moment longer. When she receives no response, her eyes tick over to Aziraphale, and Crowley’s follow unthinkingly.

Aziraphale’s mouth works, his fingers grasping at one another as he looks between them. Upon seeing Crowley, however, he straightens resolutely. “What’s the offer?”

“Aziraphale!” Crowley scolds, but Aziraphale shows no sign of regret.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says back, in just as much of a tone. “I didn’t say I would accept it, but I want to know what it is. And you do too. She’s right, you know. You’ve always wanted answers. Are you honestly going to walk away when she’s finally ready to give them?”

He stares, dumbstruck, mouth slightly open, before he finally shakes his head a little and throws up his hands. “Oh, y- yo- Yes, of course. We’ll just hear out the being that tossed me into Hell and put you on the Gate that got you into so much trouble and- and hasn’t spoken to either of us in millennia and finally shows up to- to- well, I don’t know what she’s done to us, because she still hasn’t explained a thing!”

The Almighty says something, more a concept than a word, one that Crowley understands only by virtue of existing rather than by any means of language, and both of them turn their attention to her. “There’s no… _direct_ translation for what you are becoming,” she tells them. “But I believe you could say_ arbiter of creation_ comes close enough. And I didn’t start the process. Aziraphale did, when he crossed himself into you to save you, after you had given yourself completely for him.”

Aziraphale repeats the concept aloud, and Crowley feels something tug inside of him. He’s heard it before. Azrael and Raphael carry the same title now in their new roles as Death and Life. Bound to one another inextricably, and woven into the very pattern of existence itself. Destined, always, to walk alongside creation and each other, from one end to the next beginning.

“You want to make us horsemen,” Aziraphale breathes out, a mixture of bafflement and concern. Crowley cannot blame him; of all the possible outcomes of this confrontation, this had never been one of his considerations.

“Not exactly,” she says. “As you witnessed, the riders are merely human concepts, transient and destructible. They require belief to exist. Life and Death do not. Neither would you.”

“What else is there, between Life and Death?” Aziraphale says, the words still small in the face of such an offer.

"Balance,” she tells him, then looks to Crowley. “It must exist in all things. Good to balance evil, day to balance night. Each needs the other to exist. In each there may be found a little of the other, for those that know where to look. You would become the embodiment of it.”

Crowley catches Aziraphale’s worried look, and their eyes turn together to their wings, to the white bars down Crowley’s primaries and the black down Aziraphale’s. She had set them up for this already. Gently, Crowley reaches within himself, to the warm, stressed feeling that doesn’t really belong to him, that light of Aziraphale within the dark of him, and he _wants_ this.

He just doesn’t know if he can accept it, from _her_ of all people.

“Wh- what would it entail?” Aziraphale says, in the same tone Crowley remembers him asking about the hellhound the first time. He drags his focus back to the Almighty, and Crowley watches him for a second longer before doing the same. “If we said yes.”

“You would be bound to humanity, to tread where they tread,” she tells him. “You would be responsible for maintaining balance among them, however you choose. You have done well with that so far.”

“And Heaven, and Hell?” Crowley asks. They had killed an Archangel, there was no way Heaven wouldn’t come for them. “D’you really think they’re just going to leave us alone to do-” He gestures vaguely around, still not sure exactly _what_ they will be doing. He raises both brows in question.

“Yes,” she says, so simply that Crowley deflates. She relents, her head tipping a little and a patient smile curling at her lips. “If you accept, even if they come for you again, they would be unable to destroy you any more than they could kill Death.”

A shiver passes down Crowley’s spine. “What’s the catch?”

Her smile shows a flash of teeth, too white, but oddly enough it makes him feel as though he has finally, finally asked the right question. “You would both be bound to serve in this role until existence ends, my own included.”

“That’s a very long time,” Crowley tells her, but his heart has leapt to _life_ in his chest, and he knows Aziraphale can feel it echoing in his own. They are being offered a chance at their very own eternity, safe from having to look over their shoulders ever again, and all they will have to do for it is exactly what they’ve been doing- cancel influences that would overbalance things.

“That’s why I am _asking_,” she says, finally moving her hands, and Crowley realizes with a prickly sensation along his skin that she hasn’t moved them the entire rest of the time. “It has to be your choice.”

“Can- can we have a moment?” Aziraphale asks hesitantly, glancing between Crowley and God in equal measure. “I’d like to speak to Crowley alone.”

This is, Crowley knows, an impossible endeavor, considering that God is everywhere and can see everything at all times, but even he has to admit that it feels much less stressful the moment her form winks out of sight. He relaxes a little but not a lot, still feeling wound up as he turns to regard Aziraphale with a disbelieving look. Aziraphale does not appear to be much better off.

“What are we going to do?” Crowley asks, not really sure what he expects the answer to be- it’s clear from Aziraphale’s face he doesn’t know either.

“I don’t _know_,” Aziraphale says helplessly. “It does seem like a good deal.”

“It sounds like the sort of thing we can’t escape if we don’t like it,” Crowley points out. He doesn’t say that he doesn’t really like the rest of their options at the moment, either.

“It _sounds_,” Aziraphale says, “like the sort of thing we’ll regret not taking her up on.”

“She wants to bind us to humanity,” Crowley argues, gesturing toward the door of the shop. “We’ll be stuck here, on Earth.”

“At least until they make it to the stars,” Aziraphale counters. “Crowley, she’s offering us eternity.”

“We already had that!” Crowley exclaims, fighting down the urge to shake Aziraphale until some sense rattles loose in his head. “N- nts- I- It’s what we just fought for, to keep all this going so we-!” He stops because Aziraphale is just staring at him, lips slightly parted and a strange, desperate look in his eyes, the same look Crowley wishes he didn’t remember from the bandstand just before the world didn’t end. “S...ssso we could keep going, too.”

“Is that what we did?” Aziraphale asks quietly. “Save the world so we could keep going together?”

Crowley swallows, throat thick, and does his level best not to let stress slip his consonants down into a hiss this time. “Isn’t it?” he says. “That’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it? I didn’t go to Tadfield to save the world, Aziraphale. I went to save you, because you wouldn’t leave it behind.”

There, he thinks. He’s said it.

He’s meant to say it so many times that he thought it would be a relief to finally have it open between them, but it just feels the same way it did when he stood at the edge of the bandstand and asked Aziraphale to run away with him. It feels just as vulnerable, just as terrifying, just as honest. Demons aren’t supposed to be honest, but then, Crowley thinks, he’s not very much of a demon anymore. He doesn’t know what he is, except maybe in love with an angel who isn’t exactly an angel anymore, either.

“Crowley...” Aziraphale murmurs, taking a step closer and then halting as if he’s hit a wall. “Do you remember what I said, about when I- when I came back from Heaven?”

“You told them you lost your sword,” Crowley says, not sure where this is going. “And that you, uh… said you weren’t going to fight.”

“And that I used a transport globe to get back,” Aziraphale reminds him. “I didn’t know how to use one at the time, but it seems that they take you where you most want to be, which explains why, rather than showing up in Tadfield where I was needed... I turned up in front of you.”

Crowley stares at him, heart thumping too hard in his chest, his breath strangled on the overwhelming sensation of having an answer to a question he hadn’t dared ask for six thousand years. He opens his mouth to say something but instead of words he closes the two steps between them and kisses Aziraphale.

Aziraphale makes an almost wounded noise, his hands coming up to cup either side of Crowley’s jaw, holding him there with enough gentleness to break Crowley. Six thousand years of wishing settles into the soft brush of lips unused to such an action. Something within Crowley does break then, breaks and mends and soars the way only winged things may, and he thinks it must be his heart.

Crowley pulls back just enough to turn his head and press his temple to Aziraphale’s forehead as he draws a shaky breath. He feels big and small and overwhelmed and like he’s finally arrived exactly where he’d meant to be all along. Aziraphale’s soft exhale feathers over his collarbone, and Crowley closes his eyes to savor it. He’s been so afraid of losing Aziraphale that he had not considered what having him might be like.

“So, we’re going to tell her yes, I take it,” he states, which is not exactly what he’d _meant_ to say first thing after finally kissing Aziraphale, but it is what comes out.

“We have to, don’t we?” Aziraphale says quietly as he draws back. Crowley opens his eyes to see him, but he doesn’t recognize the smile on Aziraphale’s lips. It reeks of some kind of surrender, but not the sort that Crowley expects, not the sort that hurts. “When I thought you were gone, I faced the idea of an eternity without you, and I’m very certain that only an eternity _with_ you will make up for such a dreadful thought. I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”

Crowley thinks of burning bookshops and Bentleys. He thinks of holy water and Armageddon and the long, outstretched talons on Gabriel’s hands, and he shakes his head. “Me either. I can’t lose you again.”

“You’re okay with it, then? Eternity?” Aziraphale asks him, hands resting gently on Crowley’s chest.

“With you?” Crowley asks, and then presses his lips to Aziraphale’s cheek. As long as he gets to keep this, as long as he gets to keep_ them_, he has no qualms. “Nothing in any universe has ever been more okay.”

Aziraphale straightens then, setting his shoulders as he steps back. “Right,” he says resolutely. “God?”

Crowley flinches when he notices her standing exactly where she had been before. He knows she hadn’t gone anywhere, and is not really here now, but that doesn’t make it any less startling or altogether unnerving. He turns to face her, his wings folding up out of his sight, though he knows she can still see them. It’s the thought that counts, he figures, and his thought is that he no longer needs to defend himself. She’s not a threat.

“We’ll take your offer,” Aziraphale tells her, as if she hadn’t listened in on their entire conversation.

She turns her head fractionally, gaze drifting to Crowley, and Crowley rolls his eyes a little. “Yeah, we’ll do it.”

With a small smile, she extends one hand to him, not quite like she expects him to shake her hand, and Crowley hesitates. He knows, on some level, what’s going on. He knows that she bonded them, that he can feel Aziraphale inside of his essence, bright and warm, and he knows that there is some part of him doing the same for Aziraphale. She has to finish it, but he has no idea what that entails.

“What will happen to us,” he says, unable to look away from her hand, sitting palm up so innocuously between them. He had never expected her to extend a hand to him in any way ever again.

“Have faith,” she says. He nearly laughs. He can’t tell if she deserves it or not anymore. He’s not sure of almost anything anymore, but he glances toward the one thing he _is_ sure of, and he knows there’s no going back now.

He steadies himself, crosses the gap between them, and lays his hand on hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP. Stay tuned for the epilogue, but if you enjoyed this chapter, please know that I would LOVE you hear from you!


	4. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Crowley stretches out his senses, curling down along the busy street, twining in among the mortals like an ethereal snake. They haven’t noticed the two creatures standing in the middle of the road. They won’t, Crowley thinks. They’re not _quite_ on the right plane to be seen, though some deep-buried instinct sends cars around the sides of them instead of through them and keeps passerby to the crosswalks.

“They’re late,” Aziraphale notes, poketwatch resting open in one of his hands.

“It’s Death, I think he’s always _late_,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale frowns at him sternly enough he relents. “Don’t worry, an- er...”

Aziraphale freezes as well, and for a moment, Crowley scrambles for another moniker to use, something as equally true and wily as calling Aziraphale _angel_ had always been. But then Aziraphale lets out a breath and says: “No, I- I think that’s alright. You never did mean it as a truth.”

Crowley’s heart twists, and he smiles, so ridiculously fond of Aziraphale that he can barely form a coherent response. “No, angel, I didn’t,” he admits after a little too long. Aziraphale’s smile echoes across Crowley’s essence, part of them both.

“Not interrupting, I hope?” comes a sweet voice from behind them.

Turning, they find a young woman, plump and radiant and beaming at the both of them like she’s just found her best friends after a year apart. “Raphael,” Crowley greets, surprised at how warm his voice sounds. He had known her, before the Fall. He had thought seeing her again would hurt, but that wound had finally closed, filled in with Aziraphale’s love.

“Crowley,” Life says in return. “And Aziraphale. What a match you two make. I’m so delighted it was you.”

With a smile, Crowley leans a little closer to Aziraphale. “And your partner?”

“Late, as usual,” she jokes, and Aziraphale makes a pained noise as Crowley laughs. “You’ve brought everything you’ll need?”

Aziraphale reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small vial. There doesn’t appear to be anything in it, but Crowley can feel the power bottled up inside. “I suspect whatever role this plays, it won’t be pleasant,” Aziraphale says as he hands it over to Life. She holds it up to the light, watching something neither of them can see.

“No, I expect not,” she agrees, lowering the vial. It’s gone from view before her hands reach her sides. “Here we are, hello dear.”

Both Crowley and Aziraphale jump when they realize Death has joined them, silent and still at Life’s side. He hands Life a second vial, and that one disappears as well, with more screaming across Crowley’s senses. Then he looks over at the two of them, or at least Crowley thinks he does, or at least he’s facing the same direction. Crowley finds he can’t look into Death’s hollow eye sockets for too long at once.

YOU’RE A LUCKY ONE, CROWLEY, Death tells him, like an admonishment. NOT MANY SLIP THROUGH MY FINGERS LIKE YOU HAVE.

“Which is surprising, all things considered about your fingers,” Crowley responds, glancing pointedly at Death’s thin bone hands.

“Any idea when, ah… she’ll show?” Aziraphale asks, before anyone can start an argument.

“Sooner or later,” Life tells him, with a benign smile. She takes a step back, assessing the area around them, and motions to one side of the street. “We may as well find our places.”

Crowley gives one last, narrow glance to Death, and then moves away with Aziraphale to where Life had directed. The positions themselves don’t matter as much as the spacing between them, and they shuffle around a little bit until they feel themselves slot into place within the order of the universe. As soon as they are there, Crowley feels the knot in the fabric, the disruption in the balance of existence.

His belly sinks a little at the sensation, and he reaches for Aziraphale’s hand only to find Aziraphale already reaching back. “You feel that?” Crowley asks, hushed.

“Unfortunately,” Aziraphale says slowly, “I think I just became aware of why everyone’s been so angry with us.”

“Yeah...” Crowley agrees. He wants to rub at the way the ruined spot feels, like rubbing at an elbow he’s banged on something, but it won’t do any good. They’d made a mess and there was only one way to clean it up.

“Are you ready?” calls Life from across the street.

Crowley looks up, ready to remind her that they are still waiting on someone, and startles upon seeing Time standing at the center of the group. He is going to bring up all this suddenly-appearing business when they have their first club meeting. If not to tell them to cut it out, then to ask them how they are doing it.

“Uh… yeah,” he calls, not sure that that’s the truth at all, but he wants this over with.

Around them, the world slows and Crowley feels Time’s grip loosening. She stares at him while she does it, and he is acutely aware of how he had tread in her domain several times without asking. He has no regrets, but he also knows he won’t do it again. He loses his breath for a second when she wrenches time into place, stilling it so that they can work.

It is nothing like when he crudely threw them outside of time. Her work is elegant, in a way, a stitch undone in a tapestry so vast Crowley can hardly comprehend the scope of it. Eternity stretches forward and backward around him, grey except for where his own timeline brushes it and leaves streaks of color. There, in front of him, he sees himself exit a bookshop, and sees the sky shatter open before them. He sees himself transform, and the desperation with which he meets Gabriel head on.

He sees Aziraphale pull a sword from the ether and swipe its blade flat along one of his coils to light it.

He sees Aziraphale plunge the sword into Gabriel’s core, and watches himself drop to the pavement, unmoving. In the present, Aziraphale’s hand tightens in his.

It is over swiftly.

“You really killed him,” he murmurs, awestruck.

“He would have come back for us. For you,” Aziraphale says, as if he’s trying to excuse bad behavior. Crowley could kiss him again, but it is not the time or place. He settles for a soft exhale and a softer smile.

“Thank you,” Crowley says. “For choosing me.”

Aziraphale looks over then, throat bobbing as he swallows heavily. “It wasn’t a choice, not really,” Aziraphale admits. “It was always going to be you. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“Me either,” Crowley agrees, wishing he had those kinds of words.

A soft tug on reality pulls their attention back to the task. Life has stepped forward and reached through time to lay a palm on Gabriel’s body where Aziraphale had left it lying in the middle of the street. Death comes to stand opposite her and covers her hand in his own, the bones stark white against her. She uses her free hand to set a vial to either side of their hands.

“You may want to brace yourselves,” Life says, and before anyone can, the vials disappear and raw, unadulterated _power_ blasts through the entire area, around and through Crowley so fast and hard he fears discorporation until he remembers they no longer need to worry about that sort of thing.

Their turn, Crowley thinks. He gives Aziraphale’s hand a squeeze and then releases him to travel to the far side of the group. He places his hand over the top of Death’s as Aziraphale slips his hand under Life’s. The connection to creation shudders through him like a small earthquake, shaking loose memories he’d long buried of a time he had used ether to craft so many new things. Some distant part of him recognizes the wet on his cheeks, but he’s too busy delving into the sensation of being a creator again.

Alongside of him, he feels Aziraphale, watching, reveling, and they spread their wings together, perfectly balanced mirrors of one another. Aziraphale had never been a creator before, which means this falls to Crowley to demonstrate the first time. He reaches out, crimson essence tangled with gold and black and covered in a sheen of white shimmer, and begins to pull upon the power at his disposal in this moment. God had given them a fragment of raw Between and Death had brought with him the last thoughts of a dying Archangel and Life had opened her well to them for permission.

Crowley weaves them together, braids them into a thread and watches them mesh, spooling them out so he can work. With delicate motions, he wraps the thread around and about, connecting and separating pieces, until he has created that which they destroyed, that which they had unbalanced with their actions. He pulls at the knot they had caused in the fabric of creation, and presses what he has made into it until it loosens, smoothing back out into its proper form.

Relaxing, Crowley releases the thread and sits back, feeling a bit like he’d gone for a run twenty minutes ago, the pleasant ache of having done something worthwhile sitting deep in his core. His wings slide slowly closed, tucking tight against him out of sight.

Before he can recover any further, time snaps back into place, and they are standing back in the middle of the road. Gabriel stands before them in his terrible suit, staring at them with wide, purple eyes. Crowley wonders how much he remembers of what happened, if anything. A not-so-small part of him hopes Gabriel remembers every excruciating detail of his own death.

Life steps forward. “You still have things to do, Archangel,” she says gently. “Perhaps you ought to go home to start them. And I would suggest, in the future, you consider your vices closely before acting upon them. You are meant for far better things than what you found here.”

“Home,” Gabriel repeats, in the sort of tone which suggests he does not remember as much as Crowley would like. “Yes, I believe you’re right.”

In a flash of bright light, Gabriel is gone. Crowley relaxes instantly, though he still hisses in Gabriel’s wake, low and irritated. A part of him wishes they hadn’t had to do this, but the universe had been out of balance without Gabriel, and that had lain under Crowley’s skin like a thorn. He is not sure he likes what that promises for their future, but it seems like a good system for making sure they take care of their responsibilities. Better, say, than the systems Heaven and Hell had devised, at any rate.

“Is it always... like this?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley glances over, but Aziraphale is not talking to him. He’s looking past him, to where Death and Life stand.

“Not always,” Life tells him with a kind smile. She leans into Death’s side a little. “But sometimes someone comes along and makes things interesting for a while.”

“It seems a bit… overwhelming,” Aziraphale confesses, hands wringing a little.

“So many worthwhile things are,” she says. “I’m sure we’ll see you again soon.”

NOT TOO SOON, PLEASE.

Life’s laughter is the last thing they hear before they are alone again on the street. At some point, time had resumed and Time had gone, leaving them to sort themselves out after their first big act as Balance. Crowley lets out a loud, purposeful breath.

“Well, that was a _thing_,” he says, sticking his fingers into his pockets because the rest of his hands won’t fit. “What d’you want to do now?”

When Aziraphale smiles, Crowley feels it in his core, warm and relieved and pleased. He gestures to the bookshop behind them, the same one they had been leaving when all of this started, and says: “I think I would like to have another look inside that bookshop, and then I would like to have lunch with you, and then I would like to just bloody go _home_.”

Crowley grins, wide and unhindered by all of the things which had for so long prevented him from showing himself to Aziraphale openly. “Angel, that sounds like the best plan I’ve heard all week.”

And as they head into the bookshop, inches apart but joined essences brushing happily, neither of them notice the small figure across the street, watching them with a fond smile upon her face. This might just be the best hand she had ever yet dealt.

**Author's Note:**

> This story started after a conversation I had with TheLadyZephyr regarding the limitations of magic in the Good Omens universe. Specifically, she wanted to know what would happen if the amount was finite, and if a character used too much of it. The answer took more words than I expected, but was a lot more fun, too.
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a comment behind! I love hearing from people (and if you're nervous, line-quotes are my FAVORITE thing!)
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] In All Things, Balance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20521475) by [Podfixx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podfixx/pseuds/Podfixx)


End file.
